Why You Should Never Keep a Notebook
by meangoose
Summary: Riza Hawkeye is dead... A lot of angst written from different POV's.


A/N - Jesus fucking Christ on a bike, how long has it been since I've updated here anyway? XD Hi, guys. I'm still alive, just in case you didn't know~ Um. This started off as just a musing, but I'm really liking how it's turning out. It might be a little hard to follow since the POV keeps changing, and it takes a while for me to specify who "he" or "she" is in each scene, but that's the fun of it. 8D Right. I hope you're ready for angst and shit because that's what you're going to get.

* * *

She watches him murder the dawn with his distant suffering. His pleas are silent. She has no idea what he is thinking or why. For days, he's been a deserted island, barren and unfound. Untouched and unmapped, he's like the regions of strangers or perhaps a longitude which doesn't exist. He is not himself. The fire in his eyes, it's dimmer than usual. Even when Mustang nags him, he responds with a gentle nod and avoids eye contact.

The I love you's are left draining in the sink as he changes his shirt for the fifth time today. He's like a ghost now. She never knows where he's going to be or what he's going to look like. Blue this hour, black the next. Tomorrow, he'll try on the blue jeans or the stained t-shirt, each time looking in the mirror as if he has no idea what's looking back at him. Maybe he's changing and looking for something to recognise. He is looking for something to crawl between the curtains and save the morning. But no matter what he does, she hardly knows him either.

"Do you think it will rain tomorrow," he asks, but without the questioning tone. It sounds more like a statement when he says it.

She shrugs, noticing the way he waits for an answer; the way he hopes for a lie to fill the room as the ache finds a new home in her throat. She turns away so he can't see the tears on her cheeks. It hurts to look at him, to see a mountain corroding into flat terrain. No, an avalanche. What was once part of a beautiful work of nature has nowhere to go but down, killing everything with it--even itself. And he sits there with his unfixed gaze towards the window and half his hair falling out of the braid, shoes untied and shirt mostly unbuttoned. He's as solitary as the minutes that pass by, accompanied by silence. She knows that when the words come up for air, he will not be found again. There is nothing left but the gentle ticking of clocks now.

When he shivers, she throws her arms around him, but he immediately pushes her away--perhaps a bit too roughly. She stumbles back against the end table, and his voice shakes as much as her trembling hands. "Stay away from me," he tells her. "Just say away from me, Win."

* * *

She catches Winry in the bedroom sometimes, tracing circles on the surface of the dresser and trying on the earrings. She talks to herself as she goes through the bookshelf and reads the stories there. She washes herself in the literature, occasionally commenting on the characters. "This one reminds me of you," she says to no one. "She's strong and fearless." She spends hours lying on the bed, talking about the way Ed won't kiss her anymore. Maybe he's disgusted with her. Maybe she did something wrong. Maybe he hates her because she is also grieving and cannot comfort him.

Rebecca stands in the doorway, listening to the battering raindrops of her calm voice. It's like a storm on a window. You know it's there, but you're safe from it. Safe until you walk outside anyway, then you can see the damage it's truly done.

"I want to get a tattoo," she says to the windowpane. "Would a butterfly be cute?"

But the silent response is more than she can handle. She turns down the hall, and as straight as it is, it just seems more like a labyrinth. Every door seems like a new dead end, a new pathway which leads to emptiness because nothing can bring her back. The room is spinning, and she swears she can smell the paint on the walls and hear the sound of that compelling voice in the back of her mind as her knees hit the floor, and the intensity of the air grows around her like an ocean at high-tide. There's too much pressure here. Too many waves and currents, and the life boat is gone. Might as well die.

The long talks and the martinis are swept up by the hurricane. The night she saw that shy little girl with the passion in her eyes, eyes driven and meant to protect. Where are they now?

* * *

But her presence is still here. Her scent lingers in the curtains and in the pages of the books she used to read. The dead skin cells in the dust particles linger in each corner, leaving traces of her and her warmth and her smile. There is nothing left, but then there is also so much. Her hair on a pillowcase and the glass of water on the bed stand. And then there are a few shirts of his there draped over the chair, and he recalls her asking him to put them away. He hasn't put them away yet. He doesn't think he ever will. If he leaves them there, maybe she'll come back to scold him for procrastinating again. So typical of him, really.

Up until now, he has lived every moment in fear of this day. The day he walks into her bedroom, and she's no longer living in it. Because she's no longer living at _all. _

He goes to the closet and examines the blouses and the coats. It smells like her. Everything about it smells just like her, and he finds himself taking his favourite shirt of hers off the hanger and burying his face in it. For a moment, he can almost pretend she's with him. He imagines her, strong and capable as always, and how she was wearing this shirt when he asked her to marry him. He imagines the love in her brown eyes, the pounding of their hearts. She can survive anything, he thinks. Even in the cold embrace of war, she moved forward. She inspired him to be a better man.

He's not sure when he started crying, but he hides it in the fabric. He can't cry. No, he has to be strong for her. Not just for her, but for everyone else as well. He's supposed to be their leader. That's what she would want him to do. But how can he? How can he even move forward when his heart has been ripped from his chest?

He wants to die. He wants to pass away along with all the other dust particles and the memories and the nightmares that came true.

He knows he has other objectives. He still needs to change this country. But for what? What worth does it have now when she was the one supporting him, when she was the reason he could ever keep going? He can't save the world anymore. His world is _gone._

Maybe he's sobbing now. Or sob-screaming or something between anguish and anger. He wants to hold her again and apologise for not being there. She had always been there protecting him, and he failed to return the favour. He's a worthless excuse for a man. He let her die. _He let her die._ And with her own, she took his breath.

* * *

The thing about poets is that they don't really know. It's all guess work. It's going to the therapist and saying you skin yourself alive in the mornings and collect lamp shades because it makes all the sense in the world and yet none at all. How interesting. How probable and dark and disgusting. Just like the way they found her, tucked between the night in the morning and against the vengeance.

A poet could write long letters to people in which he says he is an avalanche or a shipwreck, and he plots the stars in a notebook because he is looking for her even though she is already gone. He can capture her in many ways--tales of her beauty and strength--but he cannot capture her heart. Not a heart which has already stopped beating. And they're all sad; he is too. He holds his head like betrayal, fingers the syllables of his hair, tugs at the blue forgiveness. There's a pounding in his head, and it travels to the parchedness of his tongue and teeth. He trembles like a star about to burn. He'll fall soon. But he cannot make your wishes come true.

Jean isn't as strong as his commanding officer, who pretends to live by her memory--or perhaps he has convinced himself she is merely on vacation. Or perhaps he's plotting human transmutation. Couldn't blame him if he was.

The thunder rises to his eyes in the first light, and he grabs his coat, rises from his seat at dusk, and goes to the door. He sees him with women, with those overly-friendly and insensitive broads who can't keep their hands off him, despite knowing he has just lost someone close to him. He wonders if sex is really just a vain attempt by man to feel something--_anything--_and they figure they'd rather he get wasted and lay with other women than attempt to bring her back.

One night on the porch, the Colonel had been completely wasted. He took occasional empty sips from the liquor bottle, even though the contents were already gone. The glass would linger between his fingers like something you'd see in a horror film, rocking back and forth like a pendulum. And like a pendulum swinging, descending and creating an evening rhythm, life weighed down on him and made him aware he had nowhere to go but down. Either take the blow to the chest or send himself to the pit below--never-ending darkness from which he could never return.

He asked for a cigarette, and Jean gave him one. The end of the tobacco provided the only light in that clouded darkness of the midnight, and it was just enough to cast a glimmering illumination on the moisture of his cheeks.

"I really hate sleeping alone," he had told him. "Sometimes, I fucked up and slept on the couch… but it's worse sleeping in a lonely bed. A lot worse." And when Jean had nothing to say, he continued. "It's so quiet now. I can't listen to her talk in her sleep anymore."

Finally, he dropped the bottle. It rolled down the steps and hit the sidewalk, never breaking. Jean was sure he _wanted _it to break. He wanted _everything _to break. He wanted everything to break because _he _was broken, and it wasn't fair that a goddamn liquor bottle could survive the fall when he couldn't. And so he leaned against Jean at that moment, shuddering from both the cold and the emotional agony. The alcohol was like a leader of a small army, Joshua bringing down the walls of Jericho. There was nothing left but ruins now.

It seemed almost impossible to Jean to see this strong man, this hero, this fucking _god _of a man, fall apart in his arms. But the pendulum is still swinging, and he has nowhere to go. The only question left is, will he let the pain kill him, or will he make the jump for himself? He can't live without her; they had always known that.

Jean sits in the dark room, curtains closed with the only light being the dim lamp on the desk. Before him lies his open notebook, filled with roses and slit wrists and sunsets. The fact is, it doesn't matter how twisted and distorted beauty becomes; it is beauty all the same.

"Out of all the reasons in the world not to carry a notebook, I give you this one."

No, no one can hear him. No one can hear him as he writes and talks to himself. No one is stable enough to listen anyway.

"It makes me feel like a human being. I could just as easily scribble my name and heartaches on a napkin, never worrying about where the commas go or whether to use one or two. Dramatic pause here, maybe. But it doesn't matter what the commas mean or what the words are telling you. None of it matters. Not even when napkins fill the rooms and the restaurants, and everyone is wiping their mouths with my mistakes… All because I'm too frightened to say anything out loud."

He goes outside and sits at the foot of the maple tree. The birds are singing in the nest, even though he is sure they belong somewhere warmer than this. He lights up a cigarette as the mother bird feeds the babies. A quarrel begins. He can hear the shuttering of wings and the ruffle of the feathers and then a quiet 'plop' next to his left thigh. He looks over and sees the small form of life, barely alive with one of its eyes missing. He jabs the cigarette into its breast as if it is an armchair, and the silence afterward is far too disturbing for him to handle.


End file.
